


Once Upon a Nightmare

by MykEsprit



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-14 20:47:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18484051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MykEsprit/pseuds/MykEsprit
Summary: The world is filled with nightmares, and Harry Potter finds it curious that it doesn't bother Pansy Parkinson.





	Once Upon a Nightmare

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [DBQ2019Round2](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/DBQ2019Round2) collection. 



> Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling.
> 
> Written for Death By Quill - Round 2, and it won 2nd place. Thanks to the admins for hosting the event, and much love to Frumpologist for her help in shaping this story!

It was the children who noticed first. Each night, they awoke from slumber--voices hoarse from screaming and skin drenched in cold sweat.

The older ones stared bravely into the darkened corners of their rooms, huddling under their blankets.

 _It was just a dream_ , they chanted under their breaths.

The floors creaked. Branches rapped on the windows as the wind whispered through the cracks.

_Just a dream._

The younger ones burrowed between their parents’ sleeping forms, hoping their presence would banish the monsters in their heads.

It never worked.

Every morning, the children rose from bed, half-dead from exhaustion.

 _Make it stop,_ they pleaded.

 _It’s only a nightmare,_ their parents said, but each time, their resolve became weaker, their tone less sure.

For, eventually, it came for the grownups, too--hearts racing, pounding against their ribcage as they were jolted from sleep.

 _Only a nightmare_ , they reminded themselves as they clutched their pillows. _Only a nightmare._

* * *

  
As usual, Harry Potter was the last to realize there was something amiss. He had good reason this time--he was, after all, a man who lived in nightmares. Every night, he starved in that blasted tent in the middle of winter or dodged spells as the castle shattered and tumbled to the ground. When he closed his eyes, the faces of Remus and Tonks and Fred and even Snape flitted behind his eyelids like a macabre cast of a never-ending show.

He didn’t mind; at least, that’s what he told himself every time he went to sleep. It was his price of having survived when they didn’t. In this small way, they would never be forgotten.

The murmurs hummed around him-- _can’t sleep, horrible, terrifying nightmares--_ but he ignored it as he did Professor Binns’ lessons.

The rumbling became a roar, and then he saw it--the black circles under his coworkers’ eyes, the thin, dry skin sagging down their cheeks as they ingested dubious combinations of caffeine and Pepper-Up Potion.

They looked sallow and sickly, and when he finally got around to asking what-in-Merlin’s-name happened, they nearly bit his head off.

He got his answer, anyway; it made him scratch the back of his unruly hair. “Nightmares?”

 _Yeah_ , they snapped.

“What’s so bad about nightmares?”

They glared at him, their wanness carving their faces fit for the buttresses of a Gothic church.

“All right,” Harry said, slowly backing away. “Nevermind.” Nightmares were where he visited with long-lost friends and family.

He couldn’t wrap his mind around their aversion of it.

* * *

 

  
He had always thought Pansy Parkinson was exceptionally good-looking. Even as she had stood in the Great Hall four years ago, one arm wrapped around a younger Slytherin’s small frame as the other reached out to him, forefinger pointed accusingly, a pea-sized part of his man-brain thought she made a striking picture.

Shortly after graduation, she got a job at the Ministry. They never spoke; when one volunteered the other to certain death to ensure their own survival, a casual “good morning” rarely sufficed.

They had, instead, a nodding sort of acquaintance. He bobbed his head at her when they stepped into the elevators. She sliced her head up and down when they bumped into each other at interdepartmental meetings. He inclined his head chivalrously as he let her use the Ministry loo entrance before him.

One morning, as the bone-weary masses trudged through the grand atrium, she caught his eye. Her skin was dewy even as the light reflected off the ghastly green stone. Her eyes were round and bright; her hair was dark and shiny.

The legume part of his brain took control of his mouth before the rest of him caught up. “You’re very pretty,” he blurted.

Pansy turned to him slowly, her countenance careful and still. “Yes. I know.”

“No, I meant--yes, you are pretty.” He fidgeted with the sleeves of his regulation Auror cloak. “You don’t look like the undead after a detox cleanse.”

“Thanks?”

“You look well-rested, is what I meant.”

Her eyes smiled. “So do you.”

“Do you not get nightmares?” Surely, if she did, she would look like the others--slowly transforming into Dementors, only with a caffeine addiction.

Pansy smirked. “Of course, I do.”

Harry’s eyebrows lifted. “And you sleep through it all?”

She leaned forward, her lips widening into a Cheshire grin. “Like a baby,” she whispered.

He waited for it; the prick at the back of his skull, the urge to back away. The signals his body gave, warning him to not be comfortable around others.

Cautioning him not get close to anyone.

Instead, he held his ground, the tip of his nose only a few inches from hers. Breathing in her air and taking in her presence. Maybe it was her affinity to nightmares. Perhaps his pea-brain helped him along. “Would you like to have dinner sometime?”

* * *

 

He hated the number seven for obvious reasons. He usually wasn’t the superstitious sort, but when it came to the number seven, he became queasy and a little bit gassy.

As it were, they were seven dates in when she let him in on her secret.

“I call it The Sandman.” Pansy pointed to the colossal structure along the wall inside the room behind the door she called No-no. In the handful of times he had spent the night at her place, she told him, under no circumstances was he to go through that door.

Of course, by the (cursed) seventh date, she let him in herself.

The Sandman looked like an hourglass without a top or a bottom. A glass funnel opened to the high ceiling, gathering golden dust that appeared from somewhere beyond; the dust sprinkled down the wide end of an identical funnel. In the middle, where the narrow parts met, a melon-sized moonstone glowed.

The most puzzling part of the whole set-up was the young woman lying under the contraption. She had Pansy’s fine hair and delicate bone structure. Were her eyes open, she likely also had Pansy’s eyes.

“And her?” Harry asked. “What do you call her?”

“Violet,” she answered, her unusually soft tone caressing the name.

“Family of yours.”

She nodded. “My sister.”

He approached the bed deliberately, waiting for Pansy to protest. She didn’t. “Is she alright?” he whispered.

“She was...hurt. During the attack on Hogwarts, she was caught in the crossfire.”

“Cursed?”

Pansy shook her head, chuckling mirthlessly. “Buried under a portion of the staircases. Hasn’t woken up since.”

Harry’s right pinky twitched. “I’m sorry.”

“Your fault.”

His heart dropped to his navel, and he glanced at her in the corner of his eye. She stared at him squarely, openly. Despite her words, not a drop of malice poisoned her features; rather, there was a poignant acceptance in the set of her lips.

He cleared his throat, tilting his forehead towards the device. “So, what’s this, then?”

She reached up, fingers extended as if to caress the moonstone suspended in the center between the funnels. Her fingertips stopped short. “When she was younger, Violet was plagued with nightmares. I’d often wake up in the middle of the night to find her snuggled against my back.” Her hand dropped to her sister’s face, caressing her alabaster skin. “There’s not much I can do for her now except this one thing. I could make sure that until she wakes up, all she ever has is good dreams.”

During this seventh date, two things finally dawned on Harry.

The first: “It’s you. You’re the reason why people have been having nightmares. And _only_ nightmares.”

Pansy bobbed her head once. “The Sandman collects their good dreams. They’re left with the bad dreams by default.” She tore her gaze from her sister’s face. “I’m not sorry. Are you going to stop me now that you know?”

The second realization came to Harry like a weight lifting off his shoulders. “No,” he said firmly as he stared at the young girl’s sleeping form. “I don’t have to be everyone’s savior. I don’t have it in me to save them from their nightmares.” He held out his hand, and Pansy threaded their fingers together. “The world can suffer for now. At least until she wakes up.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments/Kudos are appreciated.


End file.
